Orphan Trains

by Stephen O'Connor

  He was waiting for the carriage that would take him to Pest when he saw the countess being escorted back from her afternoon stroll by the prison provost. One last time Brace attempted to catch her eye, if only to bid her farewell, and yet again she failed to notice him. Long afterward, when Brace was back at Fred Olmsted’s Staten Island farm, putting the final touches on his account of his imprisonment, he heard that after many months of sham trials, the countess had finally been sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.

  After four days of travel Brace was safe, at last, in Pest, sitting down to tea on the balcony of the home of an English missionary who had been active in securing his release. “How shall I ever forget that evening,” he wrote near the conclusion of Hungary in 1851:

  The sun was just setting, and the rich rays poured down into the whole valley of the Danube, which lay at our feet, gilding with glowing light the fine buildings of Pesth, and the summit of the old fortress of Ofen, while it left the side toward us in dark shadow. The colors changed each instant on the clouds above, becoming more and more gorgeous. And as the sun went down behind the Ofener mountains, there seemed to be almost endless vistas of splendid coloring opening beyond.

  We all felt the scene with an awe and happiness not to be spoken in words. And as the old missionary called us to the table, and uncovering his gray locks, thanked HIM who had made all this, for His goodness, and that He had brought their friend back again from danger and suffering, I joined with a thankfulness not to be described. And as he prayed for “the unhappy land,” and that “the ends of justice might everywhere be fathered,” I resolved inwardly that, God willing, my efforts would never fail, while I had strength to give them, for the oppressed in any land.51

  PART II

  DOING

  TESTIMONY

  JOHN JACKSON

  The Runaway White-Slave Boy

  January 24th 1859. This morning a boy made his appearance in the office with a note of recommendation from Mr. O’Connor of the Newsboys Lodging House. He appeared to be about 14 years old, and had quite a good humored well looking face, and a merry twinkling in his eyes. His attire was very simple, almost consisting of a primitive garment something like a coat with long skirts—the original color was quite gone—several greasy hues having taken its place, and it was fastened near his neck with a piece of twine. His yellow skin appeared through a rent or two in the sleeves, the remark is superfluous that his linen was invisible. Before he told his story he desired something to eat “for I han’t had nothing today,” said he, “an’ I never likes to talk was a hungry mouth.”

  The story is here set down in the very words in which he delivered it. His name is John Jackson, he spoke in a foreign accent which he picked up he said in Europe, and at sea.

  “I am a native of America,” commenced John. “Father died when I was a year old. Mother four years ago. My troubles began before mother was lost. We were living at Philadelphia, and I was a very little boy. I heard the soldiers one day, as they were a goin’ through Philadelphia with their music and drums. So I followed them along, and at night I couldn’t find my way back home to mother. I was so sick from crying and so tired from walking that I lay down in Market Street and fell asleep.

  “I don’t know how long I was asleep, but two policemen came along, and picked me up. They asked me where I lived, and I could give no correct answer, so they took me to the Station House, and kept me there two weeks. I was treated so well that I liked this place. They gave me candy and I could have gone away if I had any mind to it. At the end of the two weeks I was taken to the House of Refuge. I was told by my friends the policemen that this was a good place, and indeed, I hadn’t much to say against it, for I was treated tolerably well. There was a certain lot of work to do for the week, and every boy had so much money given to him at the end. The good boys got 4 shillings some weeks; sometimes we got only two. There were about 280 boys in all there, and they were of all sorts, good, bad and middling. With my money I used to buy lots of cakes from the bakers who supplied the House with bread.

  “At last mother heard I was there, and she came to see me twice. She was to take me out on a certain day, but ’fore that came, I wasn’t present. There was a Mr. James Mitchell came to look for two boys to live with him on his farm in Delaware State, and so Henry Brown and I were bound out to him, and he was to give us maintenance and sustenance, and school in the winter besides, and we were to serve him like honest boys, and one of us tried to be as honest as he could, and to work as well as he could too.

  “He carried us home to his farm in Delaware State, about 12 miles from Dover. He had some niggers, and 160 acres of land and a stingy old wife that helped him to starve us. Soon enough I was sorry that I was bound to such a man, ’till I would be of age.

  “I wasn’t treated right any way. I had to eat with the niggers, and to work and sleep with them. Our food was corn bread. The corn was put in a pot, some salt shaken into it, then thrown on a griddle and afterwards served round to us, or we might scrabble for it as well as we could, whites and niggers in a heap. When the Superintendent of the Refuge came for a visit everything was made to show fair. Then we had something like fine times, for we all ate at the same table, and we had meat with our corn bread. Mr. Mitchell would then tell the Superintendent (there was a new one every year, the only one I know was Mr. Alfred) how much we were improved—though we never had a chance of goin’ to school or any place else, where we could improve the least. We dursn’t speak a word to the Superintendent for fear. Henry hadn’t the right courage, he was more afraid than I was, and when I saw he was so scared it made myself the same.

  “Mr. Mitchell had very nice children but they were never allowed to speak to us. The poor niggers were beaten into jelly every day, and we were licked till we were as black as the niggers. At last I began to think ’twas time to clear out from Mr. Mitchell, and I told Henry I would quit. Henry as I said hadn’t the right courage, for he was afraid he’d be killed by the savage man our master, but he didn’t like to remain behind, and so he said he would run off with me, and one of the colored boys, Robert Wilson, who had been nearly killed with lickings made off with us too.

  “We ran off as fast as we could ’till we got to Dover, where we told our story to the people, and they had much compassion on us, and we were taking our supper in a house when we were taken prisoners by our savage boss who came in on us like a great wild beast with another man who had joined in hunting us up. Oh! if you were to see the look he gave us, and how we shook for fear, and to hear how we cried, and how the good woman who had given us our supper cried with us. He bought a cowhide for us as he was returning, and give it to us strong. I didn’t feel it much—I don’t know why it was—I got great courage like, but the black boy roared like a thousand. Henry came along after us and got into the barn and was hiding in the hay. One of the men as savage as the boss, went in for some hay to feed the horses, and he stuck the pitch fork into Henry’s pants, and a little farther, and he roared for mercy.

  “Five times after this I ran away, and four times I was catched, and brought back.

  “About a year after this, when I had been with Mitchell, about four years, he put us out to work in new ground—a clearing just planted with wheat and corn, and he put me dropping corn and told me to keep up with the driver of the plough.

  “I dropped the corn as well as I could, but for all that I dropped it wrong—it was the first time I had ever dropped corn. The boss came round, and asked who dropped the corn? I answered at once that I had dropped it—and that I had done it as well as I could. Without a word more, he pulled the shirt over my head, and beat me over the back with a hickory stick, as fast as he could lick. I was all over blood. I had a bad night you may be sure, and you may think my thoughts were not good.

  “He sent me the next morning to Smyrna five miles off to get the wheat and corn ground. He said I should be back in two hours, or he would flog me. I had four bushels of wheat and corn in the waggon. I did my
errand straight off, and was returning, when I met another boy and he said, ’Oh! you will be all cut to pieces—master is furious about your delay.’ I put the horse in the stables, and I left the grist in the waggon, and made up my mind to run off, to escape another flaying.

  “I soon got to Smyrna, and from this place I ran to Johnstown without looking behind me. I then got on the cars as far as Newcastle, and safe to Philadelphia.

  “After knocking round for some time, I got on a canal boat, and followed this kind of life for more than a year. In summer time I thought it good enough—at any rate ‘twas better than to be flayed alive as I was by Mitchell, so I was contented enough when I remembered that I was out of his hard grip.

  “I next went on board the steam-ship ‘Philadelphia’ as mess boy. I was washing dishes and doing the slush-work for some time, and bye and bye, came to be promoted to store keeper. I tended the lamps and kept them trimmed, and was always at the engineer’s call when he wanted a hammer. I was much liked by the engineers, but not by the firemen as I wouldn’t do business that didn’t belong to me. The ‘Philadelphia’ is a U.S. Mail steam ship, and he’s at the foot of Warren Street. I was ‘bout five months in the ‘Philadelphia,’ we went first to Spain and thence to New Orleans. I left the ‘Philadelphia’ a week last Saturday. I slept the first night in the house of an old woman who took me in when she saw I had no other home. Next night I slept on board a ship, and since that I have been staying only at the Newsboys Lodging House—I don’t know what boys would do only for that place.” This strange boy related his story in the pleasantest way imaginable. The hard usage he had received from the taskmaster Mitchell, and his other reverses by “flood and field” had not made him in the least splenetic. His face was bright and varied as he told his little history in which we were all much interested.

  Jan 26th 1859. The boy above mentioned went with a large company for the west this afternoon. He was the merriest of the party—all smiles and good humor, and gave three cheers and hip! hip! hurra for the Children’s Aid Society in a voice that drowned every other as they entered the stage which was to take them to the ferry boat. We anticipate good news from him soon.1

  The official record for John Jackson’s placement is sketchy, as are almost all the early orphan train records.2 He was picked out of the crowd of other CAS “emigrants” at a meetinghouse in Pawpaw, Indiana, by James DeHaven, a farmer. DeHaven later wrote to the Children’s Aid Society that he “liked” John but the feeling did not seem to be mutual. John grew “dissatisfied,” according to DeHaven, and left his farm after only a year. He stayed in the neighborhood, however, and DeHaven would see him from time to time. The final entry in the file states that John joined the Union Army in 1862 and died of wounds sustained at the battle of Shiloh in June 1863. He was eighteen years old.

  3

  City Missionary

  CHARLES LORING BRACE spent the first twenty-five years of his life preparing to take action. He was driven by twin ambitions. One was to help humanity and the other—which he may well have hesitated to admit even to himself—was to achieve a social prominence equal to that of Horace Bushnell or Lajos Kossuth. The many references in the letters of his young manhood to social problems—slavery, Austrian oppression, urban poverty—were immediately followed by pained and impatient exclamations like, “Oh, that I could do something!” But for all of his impatience, he seemed possessed, during his early twenties, by a Hamlet-like paralysis of will. There were plenty of social and political groups in which he could have fulfilled his urge to “do something.” But instead, he chose further preparation: more traveling, more touring of charitable institutions, and especially more study of the life and ideas of yet another of his role models, the carpenter’s son from Galilee, whom he always represented as the greatest social reformer of all time.

  Things began to change during Emma’s illness, but once she had died, Brace postponed action yet again by setting off on a tour of Europe. In the end, however, it was this tour, culminating in his imprisonment in Hungary, that finally gave him not only all the motivation he needed to commence the great business of his life but also a clear sense of what that business ought to be.

  Immediately upon his return to New York City in November 1851, Brace was overtaken by what he called “Kossuth fever.” “I am a patented writing machine now,” he declared in a letter to Fred Kingsbury. “[I] have forgotten my friends, my country, my dinner, till The book is finished.”

  “The book” was Hungary in 1851, a more than 400-page account of his travels and imprisonment that he did indeed write with astounding speed. Taking up residence with Frederick Law Olmsted at South Side, Brace worked daily from eight in the morning until midnight—“with interludes of lager beer and theological discussion”—managing to finish the book in time for publication a mere five months after his return to the United States.1 A year later, in March 1853, his equally substantial Home-Life in Germany was also in print.

  The publication of these two hefty volumes would have been an impressive accomplishment had Brace been doing nothing else during those seventeen months. But even as he wrote and revised his books, he was producing numerous lectures and articles on Hungary, Kossuth, the British ragged schools, and other social and theological issues; arranging for Kossuth’s first visit to the United States (Brace put Fred Olmsted in charge of New York’s welcoming parade); continuing his studies at Union Theological Seminary; visiting Blackwell’s Island; doing extensive work with the Ladies’ Methodist Home Missionary Society at Five Points; and—not incidentally—founding the Children’s Aid Society.

  In the spring of 1852, just as his book about Hungary was about to appear in print, Brace wrote to his father:

  If I am only a city missionary with two hundred dollars a year,2 or anything else mean, but really doing good, you should be contented. I don’t care a straw for a city pastor’s place. I want to raise up the outcast and homeless, to go down among those who have no friend or helper, and do something for them of what Christ has done for me. I want to be true—true always. Not orthodox, or according to any one school or sect, but to follow my own convictions of truth. So did Christ.3

  By undertaking so much “practical” work on his return to the United States, Brace was effectively deciding to give up his lifelong ambition of becoming a minister. Breaking free of such an entrenched vision of himself and of his place in the world seems to have required the buildup of tremendous emotional force. His letters during this period are filled with anger—at his father and at religion itself. “I do not think . . .” Brace declared to his cousin, Mrs. Asa Gray, “that the Christian faith has much hold on the best young minds of the country.”4 And in another letter he pronounced churches technologically outmoded: “Minister craft is passing away. Our papers are the pulpits.”5 Most astonishing is the opinion Brace expressed in a letter to the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker concerning Parker’s newest book Sermons on Theism:

  I think much fault might be found by Atheists with your positions on the morality and virtue which does connect itself with a hereafter. Is it not the highest nobleness, which is utterly unconcerned with a future, which loves and sacrifices and suffers because, even if there be no God or Immortality, it is the happiest to do so, or because they in their present state of progression cannot help it?6

  Brace’s suggestion that atheists might be morally superior to the devout represents, perhaps, the absolute nadir of faith. It was certainly an opinion he would never venture again. But however much it may have been a part of the idol-toppling necessary to free him from his old idea of himself, Brace’s disenchantment with religion was also the result of the many “sad and disgusting sights” he witnessed in his work at the Five Points Mission.7 Among other effects, these sights made the notion of an all-powerful creator seem morally absurd:

  To start a human heart with passions like whirlwinds in it, and reason hardly acting, put it where everything bad would certainly grow and everything good dry up, and then
to beat it and torture it and buffet and starve and so educate, and at last to send it out into Eternity, to be battered always there because it was so damned bad here, is rather hard, isn’t it?8

  The Five Points Mission, established by the Ladies’ Methodist Home Missionary Society in 1848, was located across a muddy, triangular “square” from the infamous Old Brewery, reputed to be the district’s bloodiest bit of real estate.9 The mission, under its original director, Louis M. Pease, was a progressive institution, seeking not merely to convert the poor to the way of the Lord but to provide them with food, clothing, basic education, and job training. One of Pease’s most celebrated accomplishments was to convince several Broadway hotels to provide free turkey dinners to some 500 poor people on Thanksgiving Day in 1850. But most of the work at the mission was far more pedestrian, and almost never so clearly successful. During the day missionaries attempted to teach a constantly shifting group of children reading, writing, and elementary calculation. In the evenings adults came to learn such skills as cobbling and needlework. On Sundays there were church services for adults and families and religious meetings for boys.

  The most laborious component of mission work was “visiting.” Like many an urban missionary before him, Pease knew that people would not avail themselves of his services—or allow themselves to be subjected to his “improvement”—merely because he hung up a sign outside his front door. If he was going to reach a significant proportion of the residents of Five Points and of equally poor neighboring communities, like Cherry Street down by the East River, he and his staff of volunteer “visitors” had to seek out needy and potentially “redeemable” people on the streets, in taverns and shops, and even in their homes. During these encounters the missionaries would tell their prospective beneficiaries about the food, clothing, classes, and church services available to them and their children and deliver homilies on the evils of alcohol, the blessing of God’s love, and the need to preserve young girls from experiences that might inflame their passions.